Opera on the Move in the Nordic Countries during the Long 19th ...

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Performative elements and
sources
Verdi and Wagner in a nineteenth-century city theatre
Kristel Pappel
Erika Fischer-Lichte raised the question of what research on the history
of theatre (or music theatre) involves. In the case of music theatre it is
not sufficient to restrict oneself to works written at a certain time, one
should also study aspects such as the theatre’s function in society, analyse
the theatrical and performative aspects of musical productions and connect
these to the background and ideas of the international theatre of the period.
Fischer-Lichte’s response was that studies should address essential questions
and transgress the boundaries of disciplines (Fischer-Lichte 1994).
Research on music theatre has evolved rapidly in recent decades. The
performative side of an opera production has come into the limelight, and
operatic staging can be analysed as an independent artefact. Thus a complicated
network of relations is built between the score – that is the music,
the text, the remarks – and the staged realisation. The last of these has
become the subject of recent research in the form of performance analysis,
especially performative elements such as the corporeal presence and gestures
of singers. Stage realisation should be analysed on a concrete level,